Temperance Leader, Suffragist

Early Life.

Born in September 1839 in Churchville, New York, Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard, the fourth of five children, was the daughter of Mary Hill Willard and Josiah Flint Flint Willard, a farmer and cabinet maker. Willard's first ancestor in the New World was Simon Willard, who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 and made a name for himself as an Indian fighter and as a founder of Concord, Massachusetts. When Frances was two, her family moved to Ohio, where her father enrolled at Oberlin College to study for the ministry. Her unconventional mother also took courses until Josiah Willard was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1845. The following year, on the advice of his doctor, her father moved the family to a large farm in Janesville, Wisconsin. Frances Willard grew up on the western prairie. For years she was a tomboy, preferring the...